


Hunger

by guineapiggie



Series: written for the Jyn Appreciation Squad [9]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Inspired by Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 07:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15881706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guineapiggie/pseuds/guineapiggie
Summary: There was food, eventually, and Jyn learned something else, something miraculous: that, if she was only hungry enough, even the driest, most stale bite of insta-bread could be something that filled her with contentment and a pleasant, reassuring weight all the way to her fingertips, anchoring her against the spinning and the darkness and the sadness and fear that came with them. It was the best, the most whole she’d felt in that entire year she’d been with Saw.





	Hunger

The hunger came into her life when she was eight and the ship pulled away from a green-and-blue planet into the cold emptiness of space, even though she didn’t know it then. It didn’t creep up on her like the sadness did, like the way the whole world would start to spin and shrink in around her and darkness would eat away at her vision like a black hole. No, the hunger came very suddenly, it just took her a while to see it for what it was, to recognise all the places where it had made a home for itself.

 

The first thing she learned was that it _hurt,_ and that just like everything that hurt, it made people angry _._

Jyn realised about a year into her stay that for all the times she’d cried for it as a child, she hadn’t ever felt _really_ hungry. Not like this. She felt sick, felt as though something was pulling her innards downwards, as if her stomach was clenching in on itself… but she didn’t say a word, not anymore, not after she’d made such a fool of herself already. A week ago, back when the supplies had first started running thin, she’d asked the other kids, a group of scrawny girls not that much older than her, why nobody was having lunch, and they’d all laughed at her, except for one. “Don’t you think we’d be eating it if there was food, you stupid little kid, do you think we’re saving it all just for you?” she’d spat, making her jump. “Do you think we’re all on a karking bet who can hold out the longest?”

“Do you mean there’s no food?” Jyn had inquired timidly, very confused. “But there’s food in the coolers.”

“There’s no karking food in any of the karking coolers, trust me,” the girl had said flatly, leaving Jyn even more confused.

“But that’s not right. There is food in coolers. Maybe they are broken?” she had suggested after a moment, still trying to make sense of it. “The droids can fix them if they’re –“

“You’re really just the dumbest thing in the world, kitten,” the girl had said, suddenly sounding very tired, and walked away with the others (who were still laughing) before Jyn could even finish.

It’d taken her a while, a whole day of running about the base and rummaging through cupboards and coolers, in fact, to understand the truth of those words, _there is no food._ There just wasn’t any.

A full hour after that terrifying realisation, she’d worked up the nerve to ask Saw about why nobody was fixing the coolers to have food in them again. He’d looked at her for a very long time with a very strange look on his face before he’d sat her down and explained that the coolers weren’t broken at all. It wasn’t their _job_ to have food in them, just to be cold so what you put inside wouldn’t spoil, and that in reality his men put the food in them, just like mama and papa had put the food in the cooler on Lah’mu. But now they hadn’t found any food, because the Empire had taken all of it, and so the coolers were empty, but it wasn’t their fault.

Jyn still felt like an idiot, and the shame of her naiveté was the one thing that won out over her grumbling stomach. She wouldn’t ask anyone if they had found any food yet, she _wouldn’t_ ask Saw if there was anything he could do. The others were already saying that she was a spoiled Imperial brat, that she wouldn’t last the month – they thought she didn’t hear, but Jyn was quiet, and good at listening, from years of sneaking out to listen to papa and the man in white talking in his office… No, she wouldn’t say a word, because that would mean they were right about the first thing, and then maybe that would mean they were right about the second and –

(There was food, eventually, and Jyn learned something else, something miraculous: that, if she was only hungry enough, even the driest, most stale bite of insta-bread could be something that filled her with contentment and a pleasant, reassuring weight all the way to her fingertips, anchoring her against the spinning and the darkness and the sadness and fear that came with them. It was the best, the most whole she’d felt in that entire year she’d been with Saw.

She was grateful for her lessons, just like her parents had always told her to be.)

.

The thing about the hunger was, it wasn’t just food that she could be starved of to the point of feeling like something was very slowly imploding inside of her. It was colours, fresh air, sunlight, warmth – it wasn’t just food that she’d stare after with a growling stomach, hidden away in the shadows of some occupied city with a grenade in her hand, it were people, too. People who looked clean and healthy, looked like they weren’t thinking about where they would sleep, what they would eat, where they would go about the stab wound in their thigh, looked like they were loved and warm at night. Nothing bad ever happened to people like that, you just needed to look at them to tell. She would catch herself staring after them with that rampant, all-consuming _longing_ in her chest because they looked so _free,_ and she wanted a piece of that freedom as much as she wanted a bit out of that freshly-baked bread in their hand. Here she was, feeling floaty and faint and cold and empty, and there they were, steps so heavy on the ground because they were eating every damn day and because they’d never had to think about who heard them coming, and so happy and warm and so full of that karking bread that smelled so good she swore she could kill for it if they’d got just a little bit closer…

She would tear herself away and try to distract herself, but the hunger stayed, settled in her stomach like something alive. And no matter the food she stole, it wouldn’t go away, not really.

After Saw left her, it got worse, and sometimes she would just… not give in. Sometimes she would just wrap up her stolen food into a neat bundle and hide it away, and take a grim pleasure in how her stomach growled. And if she felt empty, alone in her draughty hide-out in the dark, she would know it was just because she hadn’t eaten anything.

(She knew, deep down, that it wasn’t the protein bars under her pillow that she hungered for, but a man with eyes just like hers who’d tuck her into bed and tell her about the stars twinkling at her out the window, but some days it helped to pretend.)

It was her ally as well, though, that damn hunger for life, for freedom, for _more –_ it was that one spark that it needed, sometimes, the strength for one more kick to fight herself free, to run another mile, to hide out an hour longer. She’d learned to use it when she was nine and the others were laughing at her, and it was what she trusted to kick in and get her through when nothing else would twelve years later. And sometimes she would stop in her tracks on a big, busy planet and look at her reflection in a window to see the hunger still there, dark and deep in her tired eyes, and that was how she knew she would survive.

 

* * *

 

 _Oh, you and all your vibrant youth_  
_How could anything bad ever happen to you?_  
 _You make a fool of death with your beauty,_  
 _and for a moment_  
 _I forget to worry_

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Florence + the Machine's "Hunger"


End file.
